The assignee of the present invention manufactures and deploys spacecraft for, inter alia, communications and broadcast services. Market demands for such spacecraft have imposed increasingly stringent requirements on spacecraft payloads. For example, broadband service providers desire spacecraft with increased data rate capacity at higher EIRP through each of an increased number of user spot beans operable from geosynchronous orbit altitudes in communication with small (<1 meter aperture) user terminals.
To meet the more stringent demands, a spacecraft capable of providing at least 500 Gbps total data bandwidth distributed across at least one hundred spot beams is desirable. The payload, desirably, should provide an aggregate effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) in the forward direction of greater than 85 dBw so as to provide compatibility with user terminals having aperture diameters in the range of 0.5-1 meter.
Meeting the foregoing performance objectives with a conventional payload architecture while conforming to the mass and volume constraints imposed by conventional launch vehicles is infeasible. Thus, there is a need for a high power broadband spacecraft with an improved payload architecture.